"One beautiful feature of the language-based approach is that we start with a very familiar model of computation, the evaluation of polynomials over the reals.

"One beautiful feature of the language-based approach is that we start with a very familiar model of computation, the evaluation of polynomials over the reals. It’s very familiar for all students, and I think they find it very satisfying precisely because it has a direct computational flavor." Don't know how true this is at other universities, but this doesn't sound like my experience at all. :)